Why I Went to Asia: Afternoon stroll from Goreme

Went for a stoll in the afternoon. Just the usual sort of thing really.

I thought I'd see if I could get up the top of that hill type thing surrounded by cliffs and weird rocks in the picture below. If you ever saw Starship Troopers this is actually the place where they filmed the bit on the evil aliens planet where they have a big battle.

These are the pictures I took on the way.

Entrance to an old cave church. 1000 years ago Christians lived here and carved their homes and churches into the rocks. It was a great place to hide from the invading Arab armies. All these high cliffs and steep gorges are virtually invisible from the vasy prairieland plateau above.

They carved really high. They must have absailed or something. Its impressive.

Its an impenetrable landscape.

Inside of a really beautiful church with original frescoes. These are very old.

Then it started thundering. A big storm was coming in. I decided to carry on to the top of the mountain anyway. İt was pretty scary!

These valleys were cut into the prairie by old tributaries of the Kizilirmak River. One of the biggest rivers inthe region. It flows north into the Black Sea and may be one of the four rivers mentioned in Genesis in the Bible as watering the Garden of Eden. (Biblical river Gihon?) In which case this is the edge of Eden! It looks like it might be.

There was alot of thunder and lightning. It got very windy and dust and stones blew about. But I carried on. Cloudy in one direction. Still sunny in the other. İ felt like moses or something going up this mountain in a thunderstorm. İ helped me to focus on the nature of my relationship to nature and investigate my own concept faith.